The Queen has revealed that she is a fan of London’s dark blue Boris Bikes – although unlike her counterparts in ‘bicycle monarchies’ such as the Netherlands and Denmark, it’s a pretty safe bet that Her Majesty will never be seen riding through the streets of the capital on two wheels.
According to The Daily Telegraph, during yesterday’s visit to upmarket grocer Fortnum & Mason, when she was accompanied by the Duchesses of Cornwall and Cambridge, the Queen told Mayor of London Boris Johnson, “At least I didn’t have to come down here today on one of your bikes,” reports The Daily Telegraph.
A worried Mr Johnson, who launched the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme in summer 2010, asked the Queen, who celebrates her Diamond Jubilee this year, “Oh, gosh, don’t you like my bikes?”
She quickly reassured him: “Oh, yes, I think they’re lovely. In fact, I notice the bike racks are often empty.”
Sadly, there’s more chance of the ravens flying away from the Tower of London than there is of ever seeing the Queen on one of the dark blue bikes.
Mind you, we suppose the Duchess of Cambridge could have wheeled out the tandem Boris Bike that the Mayor gave her and Prince William as a wedding gift last year and ridden the half-mile or so from Buckingham Palace with her grandmother-in-law as a passenger, with Camilla riding solo alongside them?
7 thoughts on “Boris Bikes get royal seal of approval – “they’re lovely,” says the Queen”
I think the royal family has
I think the royal family has taken us for a ride for too long.
http://www.republic.org.uk/
http://www.republic.org.uk/
But she is 90. Most cyclists
But she is 90. Most cyclists only do it for a short time in their lives and most people don’t do it at all. It is only feasible in a city, a pretty flat one at that and then only for the fitter of this world.
Sorry but that’s the reality.
Only a minority are current cyclists and an even tinier minority are serious at it too. 😐
Driver Protest Union
Ahh, but that’s the magic. Do it, and you get to be one of “the fitter of this world”.
Hello she’s 90!
My
Hello she’s 90!
My grandmother rode a bike as long as she could but even she gave in in her eighties!
I have seen other, much younger, gb and euro royalty on them tho
Please don’t use this site to promote intolerance / politics (re some comments above)
She’s 85, not 90
She’s 85, not 90 😉
And she is patron of CTC
And she is patron of CTC IIRC.
You could forgive her for not taking on traffic though as a spill could have constitutional consequences, should ask if she still users the turbo trainer?
One 90 y/o (late Walter Brown of Lothians) was persuaded to stop road cycling when the risk of detached retina from road shocks became rather too high. So family got him a turbo trainer, which he wore out in under a year.
When over 100 we had him & ‘young’ Ed Zoller posing on tandem trike for a cycling event.